Dinosaur

3 square miles and 7 rigs in 5 buildings? Surrounded by more of the same. No, Westchester wouldn't benefit from a regional approach to emergency services.

IIRC, the first helicopter was a combination of grant money and county funds. I don't believe it was entirely funded by grants. Unlike many projects where grant funded equipment sits idly by "waiting for the big one", the helicopters are used all the time. Made sense to me at the time, makes sense now. IMHO.

And coincidentally there was a camera there to commemorate the event.

Barry, that's certainly possible but you have start somewhere. If you see a big discrepancy like that you can always probe further. I'm just wondering what we pay for our fire departments.

I wonder why not. It's not like it affects any of their pork barrels or special interests.

So it's a trainer that focuses on driving. Do you really need a title for that guy?

According to buddies of mine at County PD, yes they did.

What the heck is a "chief driver"? Does he drive the chief around? Engineers have a title: Engineer. If you want to give them more authority, put it in the by-laws.

1. You can't compare the fire service to the military where NCO's serve a vital and specific function. The role of Sgt in the PD is different and I don't think is a reasonable comparison. 2. Why not continue to promote from FF to LT? It makes more sense to me. You go from being an FF to a company officer and then can continue moving up in command and leadership positions. WHY? What possible need is there for more "rank" in the FD? Probies should be looking to the LT's who are the de facto Sgt of the fire service.

Who is attacking? Obviously there is dissent among the fire commissioners. Does that constitute an attack?

I think you're comparing apples and oranges. The pension system in NYS (of which White Plains is a participant) is doing quite well and White Plains is not anything like Detroit economically.

Hardly an attack. That's nothing more than a campaign ad for fire commissioner.

Barry does that apply federally as well or is that just a NYS thing?

The issue is not about letting employees volunteer. This issue is about whether or not they should be allowed to leave their jobs to respond to calls for service. Not the same thing. It makes perfect sense and the mayor has a point. He has the right to regulate what employees do during working hours. This may have been a poor way to handle it but there have been several very valid points brought up in this discussion thus far. How about the volunteer FD deal with it's membership issues? Nobody in this thread or the article suggested a fully staffed career department.

So which is it? After an incident we very often hear "great job by all" or words to that effect. What makes it a good job? Or a great one? How do we in the emergency services measure our performance and decide that our work was good or great? Other industries have peer reviews, grand rounds, quality improvement/assurance programs, critiques, but we in the emergency services (with the possible exception of EMS but that's not what it used to be) do not. We say great job even when someone has lost their life or their home and property. What makes that a great job? Is there an objective measure of performance that we use to say it? When it's not a great job (even though we usually say it anyway) how do we evaluate performance and identify areas for improvement? How do we improve our services?

What agreement?

I'm not saying that everyone going home isn't a priority. I'm just saying that isn't the only benchmark.

There's much more to it than that. That perspective is one of the things thats wrong with the fire service today.

They have opened some stations since the merger. Maybe not as many as we'd like but still.

It certainly doesn't have to be like that. But how about the next drill night they regroup and discuss it in detail? Or the OIC grabs the guys who did suck and tells them how to get their act together. I remember those days... When chiefs were chiefs and not sheep!

Unless things have changed drastically the DMORT's are all associated with FEMA regions so there are are still 10 nationwide. DMAT's don't have any rolling stock like that. In fact they centralized equipment a number of years ago so there is very little local equipment being trucked up here around unless it is team owned. NY-2 is the Westchester DMAT, NY-4 is based in Rockland and I'm told that there is a new NY-5 based in NYC/Long Island but that's gotta be a developing team cause it didn't exist several years ago.

Since when is there a DMAT and a DMORT in NYC?

Most incidents don't require branches. They just don't get that big. We tend not to organize very efficiently and use branches unnecessarily. Not wrong, just not necessary. EMS in a unified command could be appropriately called EMS Command or EMS IC. Local preferences. In some places, they won't call EMS to the command post let alone recognize them for what they are. If you don't have an Ops Section Chief, you probably don't need branches. Branch directors don't work together in command. The scenario you're describing sounds more like unified command. It's all about the span of control. When you can't keep tabs of everything effectively, you need to build in another level. I've taken classes with some of the best (in my opinion) ICS instructors around and they always emphasize keeping it simple. I'd like to see the FEMA link you're referring to. It seems like it didn't cut and paste very well. The policy group is part of MAC and the JIC is part of larger incidents not our local ones.

If we're going to harp on terminology, it's a staging area MANAGER. The only officers are command staff positions. Think of it this way, any facility (just like hotels or restaurants) has a manager. Branches are DIRECTORS. Look at the ICS curriculum, not an EMS text book. Command positions should be command people. Operations positions should be operations people. Not exactly brain surgery there. If it is a medic that runs the organization, maybe he/she should be at the command post. Assistants are for positions like the command staff. Not really in operations but I won't fall on that sword. Units are generally everywhere but Ops too. Think strike teams and task forces for Ops. You only need to expand your operations structure to manage an effective span of control. I've never seen the need for managers of the three treatment area subsets (red, yellow, green). Generally the Treatment Group Supervisor can manage that. EMS is not the only one with a poor track record of really embracing and implementing ICS. That's been argued here many times and some very well respected instructors and advocates of the process post here (or used to in some cases). If you don't do ICS on a regular basis, you're not going to do it well when "the big one hits".

Empress doesn't do it "for free". They charge their patients, insurance companies, etc. and Yonkers doesn't contribute to support the system. Nothing is free!